So Gamescom is over, and what an insane ride that was! There was both good and bad experiences, but thinking bad, it’s all just a fond memory for me – even the bad things, that luckily didn’t have any serious consequences and therefore are mostly just good experiences.

In the weeks leading up to the convention, it was quite stressful, since Zibartas was hired to produce helmets for Bethesda’s Starfield booth, and I helped him with the fabric bits. It was stressful, because I usually don’t have strict deadlines and I’ve never worked on something for someone else like that before (making things for friends and familiy doesn’t count). But I’m really happy with the end result, Zibartas did an amazing job and my sewing didn’t ruin it! I also finished my Professor Garlick cosplay expecting to wear it, but sadly in the end I didn’t get to. More on that later.

So we split the drive to Cologne from Denmark in two (since it’s 9’ish hours on a good day) and spent half a day in Bremen on the way. Nice city that I would visit again! Anyways, so a few kms before our exit from the highway, a blown up truck tire came out of nowhere while we were driving 110+ km/h in the middle lane of a 4 lane-part of the road. I had no other choice than to drive over it, and we were quite full of adrenalin when we drove the last bit. We couldn’t really pull over, and we were truly right at our exit, so we just finished the drive, since we didn’t feel any immediate trouble. We did avoid using our car more, but shout-out to Moro Props, who took a look at our car and cleared it for the drive home (some stuff was loose, and we wanted it checked).  So that was day 1’s disaster.

Day two (Wednesday) was the first convention day, but it was pretty calm as it was not open to the general public. I didn’t wear cosplay, so I could see of the convention before it was too full. You can see in a couple of the photos the difference between amount of people wednesday vs. friday (when I wore Songbird). 
As we were just standing around at our booth, the German Customs police came over and pulled us aside and started interrogating us about our work and pay etc. Since I was there just as Zibartas’ +1 (I wasn’t officially hired by anyone nor paid, I was just helping out for free in return for expenses paid), they were quite confused by me. Especially because I had exhibitor and staff badges. I tried to explain that it was for entrance to the convention and the back rooms for drinks and snacks. After much discussion, I got my passport back. At that time, there were 8 armed police people interrogating us. It was so ridiculous how they went about it. We did nothing illegal, but it was quite intimidating to be faced by 8 armed policemen and questioned like that. But afterwards, I made a running joke of just being there for the snacks. 

The company that were middle-man’ing the job with Bethesda did such a good job taking care of us, and we had some nice evenings of dinner, drinks and party with them! Shout-out to Calaidosphere for being good, reliable people! There’s a few photos below of our adventures with them!

This is turning into an essay, so I’ll try to be less wordy now!

Thursday I wore my druid, so I could help out a friend from Steelseries with some SoMe for their collab with World of Warcraft on their new product lineup! I also met lots of nice people, among them Artcorecosplay, Littl3linx and Anni Quinn that you can see in some photos below. Of course, I spent the whole weekend with the rest of the Starfield crew, including Madsfive and Mistvein, who made and wore the suits to match the helmets – they looked so good! I also had a very, very short photoshoot with Theldanis, but he managed to get some nice photos still!

Friday I wore my Songbird cosplay, which was also fun – it didn’t get as much attention as my druid, but the people who recognized it were very positive. And one of my highlights was meeting some of the people working at CD Project Red while dressed as one of their characters. They were so nice to talk to! 
I also met some old friends friday – among them Majed cosplay, Anyadogari, Sameer Tikka Masala, Cinderys Cosplay and Xia Cosplay – and probably more that I forgot to tag. I’m always afraid of tagging some, because I’m afraid I forget some.

In the evening, we went to Bethesda’s community party, which was also fun! They had themed drinks, decorations and activities.

Saturday I was planning to wear cosplay, but I just felt really bad in the morning, so I decided not to. It was hangover, but from the lack of sleep and stress, I guess my immune system was down and I caught some bug. I still had a fun day, though, and I got to be proud wifey watching Zibartas on Bethesda’s live stream.

So all in all – despite a lot of unfortunate events – it was a great convention. Gamescom itself was as huge, loud, crowded, stressful and absolutely amazing as always. Another big experience for my treasure chest of memories.